The residents of Texas City in Galveston, Texas received an unwelcome gift this Memorial Day: plastic bags with fishing weights, candy, and KKK recruitment flyers that were left on their lawns, apparently thrown from a vehicle driving past on Monday night.

Seventeen different homes received the bags, which contained two versions of KKK flyers, one reading “Say No to Cultural Genocide” and the other saying “Join the Best or Die Like the Rest.”  Local police have labeled the plastic bags a criminal matter, so whoever distributed the bags may face criminal charges if they are caught. At this point the police do not yet have a suspect.

The phone number listed on the flyers is not in service, no witnesses have come forward, and there seem to be no leads in the case, unless anonymous tipsters can provide new information. Many residents of Texas City were shocked by the flyers, stating that they typically consider their community to be a diverse and tolerant place, but Ashton Woods, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Houston, called the flyers “not surprising.”

The plastic bags are jarring and disturbing to the residents of Texas City but Woods is correct in citing them as part of larger trend. Earlier this month, flyers reading “around blacks never relax” were circulated on the University of Texas at Austin campus on the heels of a series of flyers targeting Chinese students that were posted in the university’s engineering department. In April, flyers urging white Americans to report illegal aliens with the slogan “America is a white nation” were posted throughout the University of Texas at Arlington campus. In February, the white nationalist group American Vanguard posted flyers at several Texas colleges urging white men to “take your country back.” Immediately after the November election, flyers calling for “vigilante squads” to arrest and torture those who support diversity were posted around the Texas State University campus.

It would seem that each series of flyers emboldened copycats to try their hand at attacking a new group. Hate groups have launched an estimated 17 recruitment campaigns on Texas university campuses since September. In the Anti-Defamation League’s Southwest Region, which stretches from El Paso to Orange, anti-Semitic incidents have spiked by more than a third this year. After a week in which two nooses were found inside the African American history museum and the home of Lebron James was spray painted with a racist slur, the Memorial Day flyers in Texas City feel like par for the course. It is comforting to see that at least all three of this week’s cases are being investigated as serious threats rather than being written off as “harmless” pranks–but the Texas City flyers are part of a larger pattern that needs to be taken seriously before leaving flyers on people’s lawns escalates.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Angela Merkel Implies that Europe Can No Longer Rely on the U.S.

After his recent trip, some European leaders seem a little sick of President Donald Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently hinted, without specifically mentioning Trump’s name, that European countries can no longer consider the U.S. a reliable ally. During a rally held inside a Bavarian beer tent on Sunday, she said, “The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days.” She added that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”

Frmr CIA Dir McLaughlin: Trump creating rift w/ Germany and Europe “is one of the most damaging things I have seen in…years and years.”

— Steve Peoples (@sppeoples) May 30, 2017

During his visit to Europe, Trump said he might pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement–the most unified effort to combat climate change to date. Trump has also expressed support for Brexit and encouraged other countries in the European Union to explore leaving the coalition. As a result, many Europeans see Trump as a potential threat to regional stability. But now it seems like his recent comments and behavior in Europe could actually unite Europe–even Merkel’s rivals in the upcoming national elections have supported her response. This morning, Trump hit back against Germany with a tweet (of course).

We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: May 30, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

In the wake of the tragic and monstrous attacks on America on September 11, 2001, it is important to continue commemorating and honoring that day, and it is important to keep discussing that day’s stories and contexts. One survivor of the attacks is asking for just that. This year, Greg Trevor wrote an op-ed for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger requesting that September 11 be memorialized as a “National Day of Discussion, where Americans actively seek ways to find common ground across political, religious and cultural divides.” He suggested this as an alternative to 9/11 being commercialized like Memorial Day or rarely brought into mainstream attention like Pearl Harbor Day. America should listen to this survivor and talk about our feelings toward Islam, and our judgments about religion in general.

This summer, the Arab American Institute polled Americans about their attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims. Its key findings include sad statistics: just under half of Americans “support the use of profiling by law enforcement against Arab Americans and American Muslims,” while an increasing “percentage of Americans say that they lack confidence in the ability of individuals from either community to perform their duties as Americans should they be appointed to an important government position.” In the 13 years since 9/11, these numbers have only gotten worse. It’s part of a persistent Western Islamophobia. One Gallup article details this fear that so many in the West have of Muslims. At 48 percent, Muslims are the religious group most likely to feel racially or religiously discriminated against by Americans. There is great concern among Muslims internationally, too, about how the West treats them. Because the terrorists who orchestrated 9/11 were Muslim, a great deal of latent Islamophobic sentiment was released after the attacks. How are we addressing this reaction?

President Obama recently reaffirmed his statement that Islamist extremists, from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, are not truly Muslim. Saying that the Islamic State “is not Islamic,” he claimed that “no religion condones the killing of innocents.” Obama has made this claim before, and his predecessor affirmed the same. Less than a week after 9/11, President George W. Bush said that “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” On the one hand, these proclamations from American presidents are laudable and can do much to temper Islamophobia in the U.S. On the other hand, it isn’t their place to make claims like that about an entire religion.

Let’s get something straight: religion is kind of complicated. There are a lot of religious texts, doctrines, and mandates that condone, value, and encourage violence. This isn’t restricted to Islam. The Old and New Testaments, too, have inspired a great deal of violence. Religions that originated in the East are not free from it, either; this summer Buddhists in Burma again attacked their Muslim neighbors.

Yet peace is prevalent in religious texts, too. Love, compassion, and understanding are fundamental in many religions, Islam included. Both these presidents are Christians, but they were more than willing to paint the over one billion adherents with one broad brush. I do not think that one person of any religion should make a broad claim about each of its adherents. Religion is a complex web of faith that we should be wary of characterizing singularly. President Obama is right in that Islam is a peaceful practice. President Obama is wrong, too, as devout Muslims have looked to their texts for justification of sick violence.

Politically, it’d be preferable if religion could be summed up by either “peace” or “violence” or some other trait. But religion’s complexity, dynamism, and diversity make it interesting, relevant, and beautiful, even. Of course, the aspects of violence contribute in no way to that beauty. Should people use religion as a justification for violence? Never. But to ignore that violence is a part of religion’s history, present, and most likely its future is unfortunately a mistake.

This is why we need a Day of Discussion. This is why we need to talk, learn, and grow. We can’t be prejudicial of Muslims, but we sure can be prejudicial of the terrorists in Iraq and Syria. We have to be mature enough to condemn those Muslims and not condemn all Muslims. Hindsight allows us to condemn the Spanish Inquisitors who persecuted people of other faiths. Those Catholics did horrible things, but we can’t condemn all Catholics or Catholicism generally. Making these distinctions is important, and generalizing is dangerous. If we listen to survivor Greg Trevor and sit down to talk about it a little more, I think we would be on the right path.

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Violence, Religion, and the Need for a 9/11 Day of Discussion appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! For me it is always a low-key weekend that usually ends up in quality time with my family, celebrating the holiday honoring the men and women who have died serving in the armed forces protecting our freedom. This weekend also calls for a celebration of my birthday — my actual birthday is today.

Monday was like every other Memorial Day where a small group of my family members get together to have some sort of meal and talk about anything and everything. This time, no surprise, the subject matter of the young man who murdered six people and injured 13 before killing himself near Santa Barbara over the weekend was brought up. A tragedy that is hard to understand but something that has become increasingly normal in our society.

It’s no secret that I have conservative views, as do most of my family members. I was raised with guns around the house, unavoidable when your father is in the military and a gun enthusiast from the South. I was taught early on in life what guns can do, how to handle them but also how to respect them. Shooting a rifle in the backwoods of Mississippi was a summer pastime with my brother under the supervision of our father. I am not a member of the NRA but I certainly support the organization.

As my family and I sat down for lunch, my aunt brought up this news and the press conference where the father of one of the victims, Christopher Martinez, age 20, had made a statement blaming not only politicians but also the NRA for his son’s death.

I cannot imagine the pain that a parent goes through when losing a child to such a heinous act and I understand that with grief comes anger and the need to blame someone for the loss of his child. I have lost friends in the past to guns, either self-inflicted or at the hand of someone else, but never have I once needed to blame anyone except the person who pulled that trigger.

The NRA promotes safety, responsibility, respect, and education toward guns. The NRA did not put that gun into the hands of this obviously disturbed man. Not to mention that in later reports police have discovered that three people were stabbed to death by the same person. Who do we blame then? Victorinox Swiss Army? Spyderco Knives? How about Crate & Barrel for selling cutlery? A knife can be just as deadly as a gun. It is not the method being used but rather the person behind that tool that we should blame.

The scariest part of this whole tragedy is that in some way it could have been avoided. The shooter’s father even contacted police a month ago due to the disturbing YouTube videos his son was posting. Let’s take a step back and think about why the police were unable to do anything about it before all of this occurred. Hindsight is always 20/20 and we can always play the “what if” game, but there were warning signs and nothing was done about them. This is not the fault of the NRA or anyone who supports the Second Amendment. This is the fault of a disturbed young man who felt that he was dealt a bad hand in life and blamed everyone but himself.

With that said, we should all take a minute to pay our respects to those who lost their lives in this tragic event. They are the ones who deserve the attention from the media — not the soulless creature who took them from this earth.

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [Ted Eytan via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Shooter Alone is to Blame for Santa Barbara Slayings appeared first on Law Street.